Good and bad news on Dulles Rail Project construction

Adam Tuss, wtop.com

WASHINGTON – If you’ve been to Tysons Corner lately you know the Dulles Rail Metro-extension is now a dominating part of the skyline. It’s taken a lot of construction to get the project where it is. And depending on where your commute takes you, there’s good — and bad news.

The amount of lane closures (in the Beltway area should start to ease),” says Pat Nowakowski, executive director of the project. “We’re completing our work over the Beltway. We’re just about done that.”

But the bad news — the heavy lifting is about to shift.

“We need to do some aerial construction over the Dulles Toll Road. That’ll be the last heavy piece of civil construction that we need to do,” Nowakowski says.

Drivers should expect that work to start in about a month.

Overall, Nowakowski says the project is moving along very well.

“We’re really transitioning from a stage of a lot of civil construction to one where we are doing a lot more electrical and specialty construction like track work and fire-proofing,” he says.

As far as the overall $2.8 billion budget of the first phase of the project — the section that runs from Falls Church, through Tysons Corner and ends in Reston — project leaders maintain that it is on budget.

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(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)

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